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Comment spooky action at a distance (Score 1) 166

The only thing I was looking in the paper was the explanation of spooky action at a distance. There is no explanation I could find. Anybody? He tackles causality but I did not see him using it to explain the spooky-action-at-a-distance phenomena. This phenomenon is the most puzzling item in the quantum world. How come 2 points (out of 10^400) points can communicate with each other.

Comment Re:And here it comes... (Score 0) 373

"... What form of life on earth does not age and die? Name one." Bacteria. "What does life on earth look like if we cure aging? Well, we better well cure the problem of giving birth at the same time, doncha think?" If we live healthy and young for 200 years, for example, giving birth may occur at older age. Why would you want to have kids every single year if you live to 200? Why not wait till you 118, for example. Look at what happens in countries of Europe, for example. People choose not to have children enough to replenish the population, a so-called negative birth rate. This might happen in the future everywhere.

Comment Re:And here it comes... (Score 3, Insightful) 373

Back in 80s only really rich could get cell phones. They started the trend. Now you and I can enjoy it too. Yes, it took some time, but they are cheap and everybody can afford them. The rich lead the way. Same with curing aging. It must be billionaires leading the way. You and I can not afford spending millions on biomedical research. Or can you? I say few dozen years from now, our kids will wonder why we all did not invest in our future and make our 80s and 90s to be healthy living time instead we died slowly in decrepitude and pain. Or think this way, ask your grandma if she loves to have Alzheimer or Parkinson. Go Thiel !!!

Comment size of volume pixel (grain) (Score 1) 532

Interestingly,

1) The number of grains is about 10^123. Number 123 sounds familiar.
2) Changing the size (radius) of the universe from 15 billion years to say 30 billion years does not change the size of the volume grain that much, which is about the size of an electron! Wikipedia says: "The classical electron radius is 2.8179 × 1015 m"
3) You can try to back calculate the size (radius) of the universe, given that the size of the volume grain is equal to the size of the electron.. It turns to be 27.2 billion years (which might be about twice as much as the size of the currently visible universe.)

Here are the back of the envelope calculations:

Radius of the universe, assume, = 15 billion light years = 4.73*10^17 light seconds
Speed of light = 3.00 * 10^8 m/s
Universe radius, r = 3.00*10^8 m/s * 4.73*10^17 s = 1.42*10^42 m
Area of the sphere of the universe, A = 4*pi*r^2 = 2.53*10^53 m^2
Volume of the sphere of the universe, V = 4/3*pi*r^3 = 1.20*10^79 m^3

Planck distance = 1.616*10^-35 m
Number of pixels (grains of the size of Plank distance) on a square meter = 3.83*10^69
Number of pixels (grains) on the sphere, Ns = 9.69*10^122

size of volume pixels (grains) in the volume of the sphere, rV = 1/ [ ( Ns / V ) ^ (1/3) ] = 2.13*10^-15m

(check: number of volume grains in the universe = number of grains in 1m^3 * volume of universe in meters = (1/2.13*10^-15)^3 * 1.20*10^73 m^3 = 9.69*10^122)
nanotech.republika.pl

Image

Irrelevant Scientific Research Honored 93

More than 1,000 people attended this year's Ig Nobel awards, a light-hearted alternative to the Nobel Prizes. Scientists who unlocked the inner secrets of dog fleas, crisps and tangled string swept the show. Handing out awards was William Lipscomb, the 1976 Nobel laureate for chemistry, also doubling Thursday, at the age of 89, as the hero in the "Win-a-Date-With-a-Nobel-Laureate Contest." The prize itself is a plaque that reads, "This Ig Nobel Prize is awarded in the year 2008 to an Ig Nobel Prize Winner, in recognition of the Ig Nobel Prize Winners' Ig Nobel Prize winning achievement." At last I can submit my paper, "Everything is Really Wet, Even Dry Stuff." for peer review.
Software

An Open Source Legal Breakthrough 292

jammag writes "Open source advocate Bruce Perens writes in Datamation about a major court victory for open source: 'An appeals court has erased most of the doubt around Open Source licensing, permanently, in a decision that was extremely favorable toward projects like GNU, Creative Commons, Wikipedia, and Linux.' The case, Jacobsen v. Katzer, revolved around free software coded by Bob Jacobsen that Katzer used in a proprietary application and then patented. When Katzer started sending invoices to Jacobsen (for what was essentially Jacobsen's own work), Jacobsen took the case to court and scored a victory that — for the first time — lays down a legal foundation for the protection of open source developers. The case hasn't generated as many headlines as it should."
Education

How Do I Talk To 4th Graders About IT? 531

Tsunayoshi writes "My son volunteered me to give a presentation on what I do for a living for career day at his elementary school. I need to come up with a roughly 20-minute presentation to be given to 4-5 different classrooms. I am a systems administrator, primarily Unix/Linux and enterprise NAS/SAN storage, working for an aerospace company. I was thinking something along the lines of explaining how some everyday things they experience (websites, telephone systems, etc.) all depend on servers, and those servers are maintained by systems administrators. I was also going to talk about what I do specifically, which is maintain the computer systems that allow the really smart rocket scientists to get things into space. Am I on the right track? Can anyone suggest some good (and cheap/easy to make) visual aids?"
Biotech

Training Bacteria To Deliver Drugs? 29

Hugh Pickens writes "While it may seem unlikely that single-celled organisms could be trained to salivate like Pavlov's dog at the sound of a bell, researchers say that bacteria can 'learn' to associate one stimulus with another by employing molecular circuits. This raises the possibility that bioengineers could teach bacteria to act as sentinels for the human body, ready to spot and respond to signs of danger. As with Pavlov's dog, the bacteria in the model learn to build stronger associations between the two stimuli the more they occur together. Now called Hebbian learning, it's often expressed as a situation in which 'neurons that fire together wire together.'" (More below.)
Classic Games (Games)

16th World Computer Chess Championship In Progress 183

vmartell writes "The 16th World Computer Chess Championship is now in progress in Beijing, as part of the Computer Games Championship. Currently in the lead are Rybka 3.0, recognized as the world's strongest chess engine and Hiarcs, another commercial engine. Another curiosity is a Java ME based engine running on a Nokia phone, which is currently being trounced by the other engines. A very interesting sideline: before the computer tournament, a Women's Grandmaster played two games against Rybka. The result? Rybka won both games!"

Nero Unveils LiquidTV, TiVo For Your Computer 156

bigwophh writes to mention HotHardware is reporting that Nero has decided to try a new step forward for home theater PCs by bringing the TiVo service to your computer. The new LiquidTV / TiVo PC package includes a (USB-based) high definition ATSC digital/analog TV tuner, antenna, remote control, IR blaster, Nero's LiquidTV software, and a 12-month subscription to the TiVo service for around $200. You can cut that in half if you already have a compatible TV tuner. This is the first time that TiVo has licensed their intuitive interface for a PC package. In addition to the TiVo interface, the rest of the LiquidTV software package allows you to burn your TV recordings to DVD or transfer the videos to other computers, iPods, PSP, or "other mobile devices." This service is due to launch next month.

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